Kellydale2003's BAT Mine

[nycsc4 5,250]

On 9/16/2018 at 4:02 PM, kellydale2003 said:

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL & RESIDENCES

 

So, I exported this baby but quickly found out that MAPs do not like to stay the same. I think I need to export it as a 3DS and re-import it. And my texture names like "0000.bmp" tend to conflict with each other and grab the wrong texture as the wrong dependency. Some textures went completely grey entirely with no explanation. A quick fix was just to re-link the textures to the objects.

But this got me thinking (and this was totally by accident), but the roof looks kind of better being concrete/tiled rather than grass. What are your guys' thoughts on this? Should I revert it to grass or improve it to a tile roof?

[Photo one: wrong texture; Photo two: misaligned texture]

I prefer the green roof myself.  I don't think SC4 has enough of those.  But it looks great either way.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Thank you for comments, guys. I appreciate it!

As promised, here's an example of the actual glass I used for Four Seasons:

 DOWNLOAD HERE: FourSeaonsGlass.max

NOTE: I used 3dsmax 2012 64-bit and you may need to re-path the files to your materials folder to rid of any dependencies. The reflections vary based on what texture you use to make them reflect, the interior floor color/texture and the blinds settings.

 

THE BOW CALGARY

Everything was successfully exported when I realized a problem. So, it's back to 50+ hours of rendering to get it right! I guess I should've check the day render for any issues before exporting it.

 

TORONTO-DOMINION CENTRE

So, I've come across something interesting. It turns out the architect of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in Toronto, Canada is the same as the Seagram Building in New York, USA. Both projects are essentially identical and were built in similar years.

So, when I'm designing the glass, I've come across something interesting. Simfox's Seagram Building has glass that is extremely different from what I have. For those of you who don't know, Simfox is an amazing coder and BAT creator. Without Simfox, we wouldn't have these beautiful models.

But it puzzles me as to why he would choose to make his glass as shown in the Seagram Building.

Does this glass look better? I mean, Simfox's plaza is stunning, but the glass? 

Let me know your input on this. Should the glass be designed closer to Simfox's? Or shall I continue my own route as is?

- Kellydale2003

[tails2489 350]

Continue with what you've got!

[EvansRE4 796]

I like the look of the glass you've given the TD centre. So I say keep with what you have.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I'd keep the glass that you have now. Although designed by the same architect and from the same era, Seagram Building has a noticeable bronze tint which is particularly prominent in sunlight. This is precisely what SimFox recreated, not least because SimCity's general lighting is supposed to represent a relatively sunny day. However, I couldn't find a single picture showing Toronto Dominion Center with a similar tint to it, so I guess they probably used slightly different materials even though the style is basically identical.

Since I'm posting anyway, I was about to say that those window washer rails could use some toning down in terms of saturation because they might look a bit cartoonish the way they are. This made me take a look at the real thing in Google Maps, and now I'm confused because none of the buildings of the real-world TDC seem to match the roof of the BAT precisely... were they rebuilt or changed in any way at some time?

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Yep T Wrecks is correct. The Seagram Building glass has a bronze coating, while TD doesn't have the same coating (it might be a different bronze coating or some variety of different other coatings). Also the facade material of the Seagram Building is bronze, while it's painted steel for the Toronto Dominion Center.

imo SimFox went too far in trying to convey that the materials were all bronze, but that was a long time ago and one of the early attempts at trying to capture a nuanced material like that.

[redfox85 659]

Definitely no Bronze on the TD Tower... and they also recently repainted it as it was getting quite washed out.

[Belfastsocrates 1,753]

Some spectacular shiny loveliness here! Looking forward to plopping The Bow and Four Seasons. In response to your Toronto query, some overhanging waterside harbour ploppables would be superb. It'd be great to some some small parks/green spaces alongside shops and restaurants to enliven coastal or lake cities. In regard to buildings I'd love to see more some of the Toronto residential. The likes of Aura, One Bloor East,  ÏCE Condos and West One. 

[Fantozzi 4,068]

On 19.9.2018 at 7:42 PM, kellydale2003 said:

o, when I'm designing the glass, I've come across something interesting. Simfox's Seagram Building has glass that is extremely different from what I have. For those of you who don't know, Simfox is an amazing coder and BAT creator. Without Simfox, we wouldn't have these beautiful models.

But it puzzles me as to why he would choose to make his glass as shown in the Seagram Building.

Does this glass look better? I mean, Simfox's plaza is stunning, but the glass?

Let me know your input on this. Should the glass be designed closer to Simfox's? Or shall I continue my own route as is?

- Kellydale2003

 

Your glass has a little bit too much color-contrast/saturation but looks clearly better to me. From my individual taste I can't recommend to take great SimFox as an aim to point at. If I was in your shoes it would be like doing a step backwards. You're already ahead. That's the difference. I know @AndisArt and @JP Schriefer doing good looking window fronts on skyscrapers. But maybe @Huston was best at this. Compare your work with them. My opinion.

 

[gutterclub 2,729]

13 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

 

Your glass has a little bit too much color-contrast/saturation but looks clearly better to me. From my individual taste I can't recommend to take great SimFox as an aim to point at. If I was in your shoes it would be like doing a step backwards. You're already ahead. That's the difference. I know @AndisArt and @JP Schriefer doing good looking window fronts on skyscrapers. But maybe @Huston was best at this. Compare your work with them. My opinion.

 

My opinion - Kelly's glass is one of the best around, he really doesn't need to look to others on how to create glass

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

I'm impressed Fantozzi thinks I'm doing good glass, because I think they suck

SimFox is awesome, but regarding glass I must say I prefer Kellydale's.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

I love the Bow it looks so fresh and crisp and precise as if SC4 would be shifted to a graphical level of actual hardware. Super great job. Please give it another 50 hours ... won't you?

Please excuse me - there is something I still don't understand very well - let me take Scotia Plaza for example.

With 8400 jobs the growable building requires Colossus Addon Mod to grow as the base game has a demand limit for a city of 6000 sims on each wealth-group?

So this building to grow should be really hard if not impossible?

 

With CAM it should be easier to grow because CAM gives the needed headroom, with CAM you have 24000 sims on each-wealth group as a limit.

So this would be a perfect CAM-building while it exceeds the dimensons of the base game stats. But then it had to have a grow stage incompatible with the base game, maybe 13, 14, 15.

So this impressive building is stage 8 with 8400 jobs and I don't understand how this works.

 

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Yeah, that's an aspect of the game I'm wondering about, too. There seems to be a cap in the vanilla game beyond which buildings won't grow - or maybe my cities weren't big enough? In any case, anything beyond 7,000 occupants seems to be difficult to get, and the further you go up, the more unlikely the building will be to grow in my experience. I'd like to know if there's a "hardwired" maximum occupant figure somewhere in the game code, or if overall demand simply cuts off somewhere.

The demand bars don't tell the entire truth because they stop at +/- 6,000, and the vanilla game has buildings with more than 7,000 occupants, which can and will definitely grow. Wherever the cutoff is, 6,000 can't be it. But where is it, and is it in the building (occupant cap) or in the game engine (demand cap)?

Would it be possible to extend the cutoff, but keep 8 stages? Or is the cutoff related to stage - for example [mysterious number] × [stage number] = maximum occupant number for a building of the given stage, and this is the reason why CAM had to use more stages?

In any case, this makes it very hard to integrate big buildings into the vanilla game. If you choose occupant figures that are in proportion with Maxis buildings, you may exceed the invisible cap, rendering the building ungrowable. If you choose occupant figures that make sure the building grows, you'll end up with disproportionately low figures.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Thanks, @T Wrecks for the aditional information. So we are in two and therefore I suggest in direction to the moderators - if possible - to move our two posts into a new topic, because as this could become an interesting discussion it would definitely being the wrong place here. When I posted here , I thought there's an easy answer to explain this.

4 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

the demand bars don't tell the entire truth because they stop at +/- 6,000, and the vanilla game has buildings with more than 7,000 occupants, which can and will definitely grow. Wherever the cutoff is, 6,000 can't be it. But where is it, and is it in the building (occupant cap) or in the game engine (demand cap)?

I can only speculate first thing to consider is the negative demand and the negative demand maximum. I think demand limit is 6000 but as with growing of buildings demand can become als negtive one has to add this negative amount too to the maximum amount of occupants. Demand for the city is 6000 but a lot with 7000 will grow but then demand will drop to -1000. But this doesn't really work, it wouldn't drop that far, only a few percent.

But ...

...second thing. To my knowledge except of low wealth, no RCI lot hosts entirely one wealth group, depending on education. So I think an R$$$ lot of 7000 will even grow with R$$$ demand being smaller as long as R$ and R$$ is also positive and covers the missing "demand extra" according to this table by RippleJet: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=1878.0  as a R$$$ building can be filled with a certain amount of R$$ too. Or in the words of RippleJet: "The total of each row is between 140% and 165%, telling you that people can accept more than one type of occupation."  If my speculation is right, this would mean the real max for one lot should be around this 140% to 165% of the city limit for one occupation group, dependend on different factors. So 165 percent from 6000 would be 9900 - and this would be the absolute maximum for a lot to grow in the base game. Again: speculation on my end.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Were my posts deleted or something?

And as for the CAM issue, it might be why I can't grow the houses properly. 

Is there a way to use PIMx without it being CAM? I might need to update the files of all my growables if I look back and see that they're not growables without CAM.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I guess some posts got lost during the server hiccups and reindexing processes. One of my replies got lost as well. If anything had been deleted, I'd see that because of the moderator user rights. Let's hope that the server trouble is over for good this time!

[Fantozzi 4,068]

1 hour ago, kellydale2003 said:

And as for the CAM issue, it might be why I can't grow the houses properly. 

Is there a way to use PIMx without it being CAM? I might need to update the files of all my growables if I look back and see that they're not growables without CAM.

Naa, I don't think you should do all this work. Not on vague spec. I think it's some kind of "bug" in PIM-X not calculating with that upper limit of the base game, so if the LOD is big enough it will give also 15.000 or 20000 occupants which isn't wrong calculated but simply above the game's limits. But on the other hand it is impossible to set this limit correctly if it's unknown. And I suspect it not being equal on all RCI types and wealth levels.

When you open the desc-file in READER - or I think you can edit this property also directly in PIM-X - you can adjust the occupant size values (LxHxW in meters) without touching the model's LOD. On Scotia Plaza it is 47.500000 x 340.000000 x127.500000 meters. So I think the width of 127,5 meters comes from the ground roofing. You could easily reduce it to 80 meters in Reader to make it closer to the tower's size. Then run it again through PIM-X  and the stats should be around 6000, I guess.

[twalsh102 1,601]

@Fantozzi, @kellydale2003, residential is the exception to buildings having all wealth levels.   C and I buildings distribute the available jobs across all three wealth levels based on fixed percentages found in the RCI Exemplars for each C and I developer type / wealth level.  The RCI exemplars for Residential state 100% for the particular wealth level of the building.  Note that CAM modifies the default Maxis percentages for C and I buildings.

Max/Min demand for all Developer types / wealth levels is set to +6000 / -6000 by default also by the RCI exemplars.  These are the exemplars that radical demand mods manipulate, usually by setting Max and Min demand to the same number (+6000).  CAM also modifies these exemplars (which is why radical demand mods are not compatible with CAM) to a Max / Min of +54,000 / -10,000 for all Developer types / wealth levels.

The way PIM-X is designed is that instead of fiddling with the Occupant Size property in order to affect the Occupant Size value, you adjust using the Filling Degree value.  In other words the LOD is based on the largest measurements of the model.  But very rarely does the building actually fill the LOD (building that are oddly shaped rarely fill the footprint represented by the LOD; roof junk and antennas affect the height part of the LOD, but are not habitable spaces, so shouldn't be counted in Filling Degree).  So you try to determine either my measuring, or just guessing, how much of the LOD the building actually fills.  Using some rough measurements from the screenshot of the Scotia Building provided by kellydale2003, and assuming the LOD is determined by the ground level awning, I came up with a fill value of roughly 0.46 (give or take a couple hundredths).

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Sorry, @kellydale2003, I feel guilty of having started an off topic discussion here. Shouldn't it be moved to a new topic?

[kingofsimcity 5,740]

Seems like some of the recent posts were unfortunately lost due to the server issues. Still, whatever ethereal plane my reply was whisked away to doesn't change the fact that I would love to help out with lotting your set of suburban homes! I can also provide custom driveway textures if need be.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Oooh, that's exciting news!  Those houses were really lovely (a pity the picture got lost in the reindexing process!), and with @kingofsimcity on the lotting job, the result is bound to be fantastic.

Concerning the demand/stage discussion, let me know whether you would like to separate it from your thread.

On the latter issue, I still haven't understood why e.g. a low-wealth residential building with sligthly above 8,000 occupants can grow if the maximum demand is capped at 6,000, and why, on the other hand, I never managed to grow a commercial skyscraper with more than 8,000 jobs.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

The Bow is complete.

And uploaded:

 

- Kellydale2003

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Surprise!

A 44-story building in Winnipeg, Canada (my home city).

Available on the STEX:

 

- Kellydale2003

[JimC 159]

Ah glorious Winnipeg - my adoptive city from years gone by. Looks great! Sadly I won't be using it for some time as I've just started a new region and I'm trying to only use older style buildings.

I'm a big fan of your work. The Paris Building is one of the most versatile BATs out there imo. Thanks a lot.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Mr. Edvards! We have to talk seriously.

 

You're doing wonderfull things. Thank you.

 

[Belfastsocrates 1,753]

Fantastic! Great to see The Bow uploaded, it's a superb BAT. Nice surprise as well with 360 MR!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

I would love to get more residential buildings like this from you. 

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

I haven't done much work on the suburban houses, but I have done some work on some suburban apartments. Hopefully the new homes and new apartments will go well with one another. So far, I only have plans to include one dependency (the parking lots) for the entire package. Oh, those suburbanites and their cars! 

I will release a whole suburban house collection along with a suburban apartment together in one package. I'm still having trouble figuring out what to do with the driveways of the homes. I'll be starting most of the exports for the homes sometime this week. However, there isn't a texture that aligns and I've never actually made a custom texture to import into the LE either.

These are new waters altogether! If anyone has any experience, feel free to comment.

 

[nycsc4 5,250]

Love the apartment buildings.  Any chance to get an urban styled lot though?  This building would look amazing in a dense urban setting without the parking lot.  It goes really, really well with Mattb325's modern apartment buildings.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

On 11/21/2018 at 9:14 AM, nycsc4 said:

Love the apartment buildings.  Any chance to get an urban styled lot though?  This building would look amazing in a dense urban setting without the parking lot.  It goes really, really well with Mattb325's modern apartment buildings.

Definitely. It's easier not to do a parking lot!

Since I didn't receive any responses on how to import a custom overlay texture into the Lot Editor, I'll circle back on that and read through some threads at a later time.

I'm not sure if I told anyone this, but I found the Grand Wilshire Centre file. It's basic bones and I started working on it, again. It's the only major skyscraper from Los Angeles that's not on STEX. I did a rough facade to start and will start adding the details shortly. The base will be the last to be modeled. I'll likely get this complete before March 2019. I usually only BAT during my off-time and when I'm inspired.

For the first time, I have a laptop that can process a lot of heavy memory. Therefore, I am not required to be home to BAT considering how much I travel. I can now do it from anywhere and it's why I've produced more BATs in recent months.

But anyway, here's Grand Wilshire Centre's progress pic. It's actually more complicated than it looks and that's why I think it will take me awhile.